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Amid an influx of heroin addiction, an outside group is urging reinstatement of a drug court in Jefferson Family Court.

Restoring a family drug court - canceled in 2010 because of state budget cuts - was the top recommendation of a court watch project undertaken by the Louisville section of the National Council of Jewish Women, which sent 34 volunteers to observe child abuse and neglect in Jefferson County's 10 family courts.

The volunteers found that drugs or alcohol were major factors in nearly 75 percent of the more than 1,000 cases they observed.

"This is where they saw the major problem," Diane Graeter, a council member who helped coordinate the court watch, said. "They really did see a need to reinstate family drug court."

Paula Sherlock, chief judge of Jefferson Family Court, said she was "pleasantly surprised" that the group independently identified drug and alcohol abuse as the single most serious problem - especially with the surge of heroin cases landing more parents in family court, largely over allegations of extreme neglect.

"We have a little bit of everything but we have a lot of heroin," she said. "Those parents don't physically abuse their kids. They just totally neglect them. There's no food in the house, there are no lights in the house - it's all about the heroin."

A recent morning in Sherlock's courtroom bore out her claim.

The docket included some young siblings whose parents' rights had been terminated after abusing heroin and other drugs, a homeless father at risk of losing custody of his children because of alleged heroin use, an adolescent runaway whose parents had an extensive history of drug and alcohol abuse and a young mother who lost custody of her child because of abuse of heroin and other drugs and domestic violence.

Sherlock said the drug and alcohol problems permeating her child abuse and neglect docket are not unusual.

"We have 10 judges with 10 courtrooms, and this is what you will see in every courtroom," she said.

Family court proceedings are confidential and generally closed to the public. Sherlock allowed a reporter and photographer from The Courier-Journal to attend court Thursday with the agreement they do not identify families who appeared.

The court watch volunteers attended many such sessions, reviewing more than 1,000 cases, before turning their findings over to the council.

The council recommended other steps aimed at making family courts operate more effectively, including improved scheduling of cases and limiting postponements. But the priority was finding a way to address addiction, said Joyce Bridge, president of the council's Louisville section.

"Our volunteers overwhelmingly mentioned that drugs played a role in almost every case," Bridge said.

Laurie Dudgeon, director of Kentucky's Administrative Office of the Courts, said officials understand the problem and are working to find a solution for family courts increasingly burdened by heroin abuse.

While the state lacks resources to restore a family drug court, officials are trying to devise a pilot project for Jefferson County that would provide closer supervision and more addiction services in family court, Dudgeon said.

"The need is real," she said. "As we are seeing heroin sweep across the state, we're seeing it in family court."

In drug courts, currently offered in most Kentucky criminal courts, individuals get more intensive supervision, treatment and services and must meet certain goals, including finding jobs and remaining drug free. Jefferson and some counties previously offered drug courts in juvenile and family courts, but those ended when state lawmakers unexpectedly slashed the courts' budget in 2010.

Dudgeon said court officials are considering identifying family court "case managers" who could work with individuals and connect them with the increasing array of substance abuse and mental health services now covered by the state's Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.

Sherlock said more options for treatment and supervision of parents would be welcomed by Jefferson County's family court judges trying to handle cases that often involve severely impaired parents whose children are placed in foster care.

"I never have a docket that's not full of drugs and domestic violence," she said. "That's just the way it is."

Eleanore Garber, a retired judge who ran the Jefferson County family drug court for nine years until it ended, said the cancellation couldn't have come at a worse time.

"Ours was shut down just before heroin got big," she said. "I think we really had a pretty good program."

Fayette Family Court Judge Lucinda Masterton, who ran the Lexington family drug court before budget cuts shut it down, said she would welcome it back as a means to deal with the rising number of such cases.

Drug control officials say they have seen a rising tide of heroin in Kentucky over the past several years.

Drug overdose deaths in Kentucky, many from heroin, number more than 1,000 a year. And heroin abuse has spiked as prescription pills have become harder to obtain because of stricter state laws and changes in the formulation of some pills that makes them harder to abuse, according to the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy.

The total number of overdose deaths hasn't been tallied for 2015 but appears to be on pace to equal that of the year before, said Van Ingram, director of the drug control office. In the first nine months of last year, 687 people died in Kentucky from drug overdoses and of those, 218 involved heroin, he said.

Kentucky and New Mexico are tied for second place in the rate of drug overdose deaths, with West Virginia in first place, according to a recent report by the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, a nonpartisan health organization.

And the percentage of Kentuckians who know someone affected by heroin increased to 13 percent in 2015 from 9 percent in 2013, the foundation reported.

Enter court watch

The Jewish Women's Council's interest in observing courts dates back to 1995 when the group set up a project to monitor domestic violence cases in Jefferson County, leading to improvements in handling such cases, the group said.

In 2014, at the suggestion of now-retired Family Court Judge Patricia Walker FitzGerald, the council decided to observe family court at a time when reports of child abuse and neglect were on the rise and a growing number of children were being placed in foster care.

Volunteers were recruited, trained and assigned to monitor courtrooms with a standardized survey form but with no specific agenda, Bridge said. The volunteers, sworn to secrecy because of the confidentiality of family court proceedings, observed cases from September through December 2014.

As coordinators began to compile the surveys and develop a report, it became evident that drugs and alcohol were at the heart of nearly every case, no matter what other issues of violence, abuse or neglect may have brought the family into court, the group said.

The council spent recent months visiting court and other officials to brief them on the findings and seek solutions. While most readily acknowledge the problem, the council members said they kept encountering the same obstacle.

"Money's the issue and there is none," Graeter said.

Dudgeon, with the state courts' office, said resources are likely to be scarce in the two-year budget lawmakers are expected to enact in the current legislative session. With the rising demands of the public pension system and other expenses, most agencies expect little to no new money for programs, she said.

But Dudgeon said her office is committed to helping achieve some of the council's goals through expanded social services and drug treatment for adults in family court even if it can't reinstate the drug court, as the council recommended.

More poor parents who would not have previously qualified for Medicaid likely would qualify under the change that expands coverage to anyone earning less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level, about $16,200 a year for a single adult. And Medicaid now covers many more services for addiction and mental health.

Dudgeon said she plans to work with state social service officials, as well as court employees, to come up with a better way to address the addiction problems of people in family court.

"We're trying to find out how to provide the same services," she said.

A missing child

Back in Sherlock's courtroom, the judge is confronted with the case of an adolescent who has run away. A group of lawyers, a state social worker and others are trying to figure out what to do.

The boy's parents, with extensive histories of drug and alcohol abuse, didn't show up for court. The boy's grandparents are in court and say they are willing to care for the boy if he can be located.

The grandparents appear exhausted and anxious as they sit at a table between two lawyers appointed to represent them.

"We've been looking for him," the tearful grandmother tells Sherlock, blotting her eyes with a tissue as she speaks. "We've been driving around in the neighborhood trying to see if we see him."

Sherlock says she will issue an order aimed at intensifying efforts by authorities to find the boy and will worry about custody arrangements after he's found.

"Let's find him first," she said. "His grandparents are worried about him. We're all worried about him."

Reporter Deborah Yetter can be contacted at 502-582-4228 or at dyetter@courier-journal.com.